As I watched the Ukraine/Crimea crisis unfold, the corporate media rendition of the scenario emerged as if pulled from an old cold-war script. Of course, Putin, the Soviet KGB-style dictator, is an obvious “bad guy.” And Obama is following the neo-conservative script of his “advisers,” or is it handlers? But the struggle over Ukraine is … More Putin, Obama, and Carbon: Denial and Decline
Note: A condensed version of Part III of this series was published in the Santa Fe New Mexican, Sunday, April 13, 2014. It is hard to imagine, after watching the police video footage of the shooting to death of a mentally ill homeless man, James Boyd, by Albuquerque police on March 16, 2014, how that … More The Incredible Darkness of Being…a Cop: Warrior or Peacemaker in a Dangerous World. Part III
We Americans have a strange schizoid view of public service. A dedicated Santa Fe school teacher finally quit recently, because he had a family to support and he could make much more clerking at Trader Joe’s with better and cheaper health insurance, working much fewer hours and not having to take his work home every … More The Incredible Darkness of Being…a Cop: Warrior or Peacemaker in a Dangerous World. Part II
Almost everyone would agree that the world is a dangerous place these days. Technically, the U.S. has never fought a war on its own soil. Nevertheless, expanding the West and the capture of parts of Mexico were executed on the lands of others, as was the original establishment of the thirteen colonies of New England, … More The Incredible Darkness of Being…a Cop: Warrior or Peacemaker in a Dangerous World. Part I
The Next Great Transformation is inevitable. We live in a world that is changing, and that change is accelerating and increasingly undeniable, despite the efforts of the fossil-fuel and related industrial, financial and media elites to cover up the hard facts of climate science and economic failure in a shroud of denial. The direction of … More Apocalypse When? Revealing the World, If We can See It
This past Christmas morning, as I watched children opening presents to the point of their exhaustion, I had the urge to write something about the surfeit of “stuff” in our lives – to use George Carlin’s term for the myriad of personal possessions in modern life. I held off. Now looking back as Spring begins, … More So Much Stuff, So Little Time!
If you are familiar with the history of science you have probably heard of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In it, Thomas Kuhn describes how science progresses not by gradual evolution but by revolutionary transitions or “paradigm shifts” between “normal science” and new models of reality. Normal science chips away at small areas of ignorance … More Tipping points need Paradigm Shifts: Paradigm Shifts are Tipping Points
It ought to be clear to just about everyone who had hoped for “change we can believe in,” that very little of significance will likely emerge from the Obama Presidency in its final years. Whatever the outcomes of the mid-term elections, the political commitments of the president, as well as the Democrats in Congress, are … More After Obama: Apocalypse or What?
In recent memory at least, Americans have been uncomfortable with the idea of class. That somehow has caused a retreat to the middle. In the context of the myth of universal opportunity for mobility through achievement, it’s almost like Garrison Keeler’s Lake Woebegone, where “all the children are above average.” The “lower class” is not … More What Middle Class?
Most of us tend to see the world in fairly stable terms. Our own daily routines, as well as those of the world around us have a consistency that is predictable and thus comfortable. Yet over extended periods of time, human history has been punctuated by many major upheavals, revolutions, and transformations of the way … More The Next Great Transformation
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 